News In Brief

An Iowa legislative committee has voted to rescind a tax break for
tuition expenses granted to parents in a controversial measure last
year.

The House ways and means panel approved a bill to repeal the credit
on a 20-to-6 vote on March 16, sending the measure to the full House
for debate.

Proponents of the repeal said it would save the state $3.5 million
next year. They also argued that lawmakers had not had a chance to vote
on the merits of the tax credit, which was adopted last May on the last
day of the legislative session.

A provision establishing the tax break was attached to the
legislature's main appropriations bill at the last minute. The measure,
which also provided significant pay raises for teachers, passed by a
one-vote margin.

Under the provision, parents can claim an state-income-tax credit of
5 percent on the first $1,000 spent, per child, for tuition and
textbook fees at a private or public school. Or, if the parents itemize
their deductions, they can deduct from their tax liability up to $1,000
per child for such expenses.

Families with adjusted gross incomes of more than $45,000 a year are
not eligible for the credits.

"We were angered that we never had a chance to vote yes or no on the
tax credit,'' state Representative Phil L. Wise, who introduced the
repeal legislation, said last week.

Moreover, he said, lawmakers are looking for ways to balance the
state's $2.6-billion budget for next year.

The revenue that would be gained by abolishing the credit "doesn't
appear to make much of a dent,'' he acknowledged, "but we are down to
the point of looking at places to cut a few million.''

Although the measure is eligible for debate in the full House until
the end of the session in late April, some education lobbyists who
support the repeal said its prospects for approval were slim.

Deukmejian Signs Measure Setting School-Bond Vote

Gov. George Deukmejian has signed legislation that will place an
$800-million school-construction bond issue before California voters on
the June ballot.

Under an agreement reached earlier this year between the Governor
and legislative leaders, a second $800-million bond issue for school
construction is also likely to appear on the November ballot.

Voters in the two elections could face requests for a record $5.4
billion in state-sponsored bond issues to fund capital improvements in
a wide variety of programs, including transportation, low-income
housing, prisons, libraries, and higher education.

As part of a compromise to ensure the bill's passage, the
legislature also amended the state's developer-fees law, which allows
school districts to assess fees for school construction from builders,
based on the amount of new residential and commercial construction in
the district.

As approved in 1986, the law allowed districts that had
unsuccessfully sought passage of bond issues for school construction to
ignore a legislative ceiling on the rate of assessment for new
construction. The compromise approved this month extends the maximum
rate ceiling to all districts, regardless of the outcome of their bond
referenda.

PACE Disputes Findings On Black Achievement

A controversial study that found lagging rates of achievement among
black students in Los Angeles-area high schools is flawed because it
compared "apples with oranges,'' a group of researchers that reviewed
the report has concluded.

The review by Policy Analysis for California Education found what
analysts said were several methodological errors in the original study,
conducted by the University of Chicago's Metropolitan Opportunity
Project.

The Chicago researchers based their conclusions on data from
student-achievement tests collected over a 10-year period.

That methodology was faulty, the PACE reviewers concluded. For
example, they said, the types of schools included in the test-score
data varied over the period studied, making a straight comparison of
the scores invalid.

The original study, part of a broad look at opportunities for
minorities in five metropolitan areas, concluded that state reform
efforts had not benefited poor and minority students in the Los Angeles
area.

It sparked immediate criticism from state officials, who charged
that its conclusions were erroneous and would contribute ammunition to
foes of the state's reform movement. (See Education Week, Nov. 4,
1987.)

The review by PACE, a nonprofit university-based research
consortium, found that achievement-test scores for black students in
metropolitan Los Angeles had risen steadily during the three years
following the enactment of a statewide school-reform package in
1983.

Washington State has launched a $1.5-million program to provide
literacy training for parents of at-risk students.

The pilot project, called "Even Start,'' is the first statewide
effort of its kind in the nation, Gov. Booth Gardner and the state's
school chief, Frank B. Brouillet, said in announcing the program this
month.

State officials expect that 1,165 parents will receive instruction
and, in turn, help their preschool and school-age children acquire
language skills.

"Even Start'' was approved in the 1987 legislative session.
Officials estimate that as many as 400,000 Washington parents need such
assistance. If the pilot effort proves successful, they said, it may be
expanded.

After rejecting several proposals to restructure the New York City
board of education, Mel Miller, speaker of the New York State Assembly,
has put forth a plan of his own that would eliminate board members'
salaries, personal staffs, and transportation perquisites.

The measure is designed to remove incentives for board members to
interfere in the day-to-day operation of the school system and to
bolster the autonomy of Richard R. Green, the recently inaugurated city
schools chancellor, according to the speaker's press secretary.

Critics of the New York City schools have charged that the board
spends too much time on routine matters and too little devising
long-range policies and improvements.

A bill that would outlaw electronic paging devices in Tennessee schools
has cleared the state Senate's education committee with no opposition
and will come before the full chamber for debate this week.

Police officials have charged that students who work for drug
dealers carry the "beepers'' to school so they can be paged to make
drug deliveries. Several urban school districts nationwide have either
banned or are considering bans on student possession of the
devices.

Students who have a legitimate reason for carrying a beeper may be
exempted from the prohibition if the bill becomes law, according to a
spokesman for the state board of education.

To help lower the dropout rate in Arkansas, school officials should
consider clarifying discipline policies, adopting alternatives to
corporal punishment, and establishing intervention programs for truant
students, a state task force has concluded.

The recommendations were included in a recent report by the Task
Force on Youth at Risk, a panel of educators, legislators, and
representatives of business and youth-services groups appointed a year
ago by Gov. Bill Clinton.

The panel also advised the state education department to expand its
database on dropouts and suspensions; require school officials to
interview dropouts within two weeks of the time that they quit school;
and work more closely with other governmental agencies, youth-service
providers, and employment and training programs.

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